| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Rape of Lucrece by William Shakespeare: Their smoothness, like a goodly champaign plain,
Lays open all the little worms that creep;
In men, as in a rough-grown grove, remain
Cave-keeping evils that obscurely sleep:
Through crystal walls each little mote will peep:
Though men can cover crimes with bold stern looks,
Poor women's faces are their own faults' books.
No man inveigb against the wither'd flower,
But chide rough winter that the flower hath kill'd!
Not that devour'd, but that which doth devour,
Is worthy blame. O, let it not be hild
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Beast in the Jungle by Henry James: he drew breath, in pain; he turned in his dismay, and, turning, he
had before him in sharper incision than ever the open page of his
story. The name on the table smote him as the passage of his
neighbour had done, and what it said to him, full in the face, was
that she was what he had missed. This was the awful thought, the
answer to all the past, the vision at the dread clearness of which
he turned as cold as the stone beneath him. Everything fell
together, confessed, explained, overwhelmed; leaving him most of
all stupefied at the blindness he had cherished. The fate he had
been marked for he had met with a vengeance--he had emptied the cup
to the lees; he had been the man of his time, THE man, to whom
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Plutarch's Lives by A. H. Clough: Syracuse itself, now hemmed him in and besieged him in the citadel
and what is called the Island, whither he was fled for his last
refuge; while the Carthaginians, by agreement, were to make it their
business to hinder Timoleon from landing in any port of Sicily; so
that he and his party being driven back, they might with ease and at
their own leisure divide the island among themselves. In pursuance
of which design, the Carthaginians sent away twenty of their galleys
to Rhegium, having aboard them certain ambassadors from Hicetes to
Timoleon, who carried instructions suitable to these proceedings,
specious amusements and plausible stories, to color and conceal
dishonest purposes. They had order to propose and demand that
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